Edwards, Sarah JL;
Silaigwana, Blessing;
Asogun, Danny;
Mugwagwa, Julius;
Ntoumi, Francine;
Ansumana, Rashid;
Bardosh, Kevin;
(2022)
An ethics of anthropology-informed community engagement with COVID-19 clinical trials in Africa.
Developing World Bioethics
10.1111/dewb.12367.
(In press).
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the critical role of ethics and community engagement in designing and conducting clinical research during infectious disease outbreaks where no vaccine or treatment already exists. In reviewing current practices across Africa, we distinguish between three distinct roles for community engagement in clinical research that are often conflated: 1) the importance of community engagement for identifying and honouring cultural sensitivities; 2) the importance of recognising the socio-political context in which the research is proposed; and 3) the importance of understanding what is in the interest of communities recruited to research according to their own views and values. By making these distinctions, we show that current practice of clinical research could draw on anthropology in ways which are sometimes unnecessary to solicit local cultural values, overlook the importance of socio-political contexts and wider societal structures within which it works, potentially serving to reinforce unjust political or social regimes, and threaten to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the research. We argue that more discerning anthropological engagement as well as wider collaboration with other social scientists and those working in the humanities is urgently needed to improve the ethics of current biomedical and pharmaceutical research practice in Africa.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | An ethics of anthropology-informed community engagement with COVID-19 clinical trials in Africa |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/dewb.12367 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/dewb.12367 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Authors. Developing World Bioethics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. |
| Keywords: | Africa, anthropology, benefit sharing, bioethics, community engagement, research ethics |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > STEaPP UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10154281 |
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